COLIN HART
Special to The Leader
Coverage of the National Invitational Tournament, or NIT, often gets lost amid the high-stakes and general excitement of March Madness.
The NIT is a small consolation for college basketball’s also-rans — think of comparing the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl to the College Football Playoff. As a result, the 32 schools that qualify for the NIT receive even less recognition than the March Madness 16-seeds (UMBC notwithstanding).
This year, however, the NCAA has decided to experiment with the NIT format a little. The bracket structure remains the same, but several rule changes have been added — a slight extension of the three-point line, four 10-minute quarters as opposed to two 20-minute halves, a widening of the free-throw lane (the “paint”) to coincide with the width used in the NBA and a few other changes to quicken the pace of the game.
The NCAA will review these new changes and consider making them permanent in the future. Most of the new rules are meant to make the game more contemporary, becoming more consistent with professional and international regulations.
Women’s college basketball has already implemented the four-quarter system, and it has resulted in positive reactions and higher scoring totals. It would appear that the same thing is happening in the men’s NIT.
Although the quality of basketball isn’t at the same level — this tends to happen when the teams aren’t as good — there does seem to be a noticeable uptick in scoring.
In the NIT second round, for example, the average score was 83-74. For comparison, the March Madness Sweet 16 games saw an average score of 77-68. It may not look like much, and the sample size is small, but the experimental rule changes seem to be resulting in trends the NCAA would like to see.
However, there remains the issue of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Also, what about the complaints of staunch traditionalists, like myself? 20-minute halves and one-and-one foul shots are what make college basketball so unique, at least in my opinion.
While it may make sense to create rules and regulations that are more uniform across all levels of competition, I’m sure drastic changes won’t be made at the college level for quite some time. The only change the NCAA should seriously consider as of now is terminating their awful broadcasting deal with Turner Sports.